Admiral Knight.

I speak on behalf of GEIST; he special operations branch of the Chort’s Forge cell that is keeping you in its trust in the Bering system.

We’ve detected a logistical snag - whilst we have the capacity to replace spent munitions within the vessels of the battlegroup, we believe that there’s an inherent danger that the warship itself along with Chicago and the Mayport, are in danger of fuel-cell starvation with continued in-space operation. This is a shortfall we cannot provide for from our own reserves.

We do have a means of relieving your fuel shortfall, but it will involve action you may regard as morally suspect according to your own rules of engagement. Note, your input will not impact if we conduct the strikes, rather, if Harmony would profit from them.

The Western cells are readying for a joint strike into the Sigma regions, to put logistical pressure on GMG gas miners within the Kiel system - which you would know as Sigma Thirteen. In return for pacifica’s support in the operation, we should be able to secure a multiplicity of compressed hydrogen fuel cells - enough to extend Harmony’s fuel requirements for another three to five months.

We may be terrorists in the eyes of our own, but we will not force you to endorse our methods. It’s your choice if you choose to accept our offer.

In addition, Pacifica’s mooring cradles will be opened to you once we can secure an adequate IFF match. This is dependent on if you trust us with your hardware - there will be no theft, and any assault will be regarded as treasonous. Our own hardware is more than sufficient for our purposes.


Finally, we would suggest you consider the advantage of stationing a permanent GEIST liaison aboard the battlegroup, at a posting of your choosing. Networking with disparate cells of the Alster Union is not easy - we lack the tactical pragmatism and institutional unity of an armed service. Having a permanent representative of the Arbeitdirektorate’s will aboard your decks will prevent you from becoming enamoured in Union internal disputes - which are frequent and libellous, considering the present strain the southern front is suffering from the Red Hessians. You have contacted our pilots - you know the status quo for yourself. GEIST are not enforcers - they are disciplinarians, trained according to the old guard of Imperial Naval practice. They will behave with honour.

Candidates are presently being selected from the masses upon terms of suitability. Final candidacy will be at your discretion.

God go with you, Harmony.

Admiral Knight.

Alright, Admiral. Your terms are just.

We have the means to refit and maintain your vessels indefinitely, however, we are not Deep Space Engineering and the longer your ships maintain in our custody and the more battle damage the we are forced to patch, the more nonstandard the vessel will become - puristically because we do not have the tooling or insider technical awareness to repair critical elements dreadnaught’s internal layout - a repercussion that will be imitated fleet wide. Whilst we can mimic Libertonian manufacture and our repairs will hold their own under practical use, we are Rheinlanders and we hail from the Rheinlandic shipbuilding tradition.

This will eventually lead to your various assets - from the smallest fighter to the Harmony itself, suffering power grid issues from systemic incompatibilities. Fortuitously for you, we happen to have the greatest engineers at our disposal this side of the law, which will delay the issue. Softwareside, the Lane Hackers may be able to aid us combat active incompatibilities, but we will not be able to stave off the inevitable. You are correct in your assessment that we will eventually be forced to cut a larger Libertonian asset apart - which promotes aggressive tactics - tactics, which, in turn, require a reasonable supply state.

We are stuck in a chicken-egg scenario with neither the Chicken nor Egg at our disposal.

You are advantaged in that we have made extensive study of Libertonian design custom through black market acquisition - you can see evidence of this in our own Arbeiter space superiority fighter, which features the most efficient power management system on any strike craft ever designed. Several years of extracting the skeletons of Libertonian patrol craft from the Tanner Belt has proved enabling, but it will not be enough. We will either have to arm you with our own gear, or find a supplier on the inside.


More pressing is the issue of cultural assimilation. The decision of our leadership to run to your aid is an unpopular one - we are already suffering from a spate of internal betrayal from the Red Hessian movement - the average Unioner is hardly in a trusting mood towards outsiders. We would strongly advise that Harmony elements avoid contact with Unioner cells outside of Bering itself - the average Bering Unioner can be convinced to hold a tolerant attitude towards your battlegroup at what you represent - despite obvious dissimilarities in methodology and institutions, there are parities; we are both patriots who believe our respective houses are the victims of subversion. We both hail from legitimate organisations outcast by systems that attempted to catalyse our own destruction. We both are rebels, but not by choice.

The old bones of the Rheinland Imperial Navy ring stronger within the Unions than anywhere else in the Rhein - there is still a proud martial tradition buried under the patina of criminality and self-interest that the universe has forced upon us. You are further advantaged by the beliefs our leader has chosen to promote; there remain a vast number of Unioners who fervently believe that we are living in the end of days, and that the various subversive forces throughout Sirius cannot be stemmed except by total commitment to their eradication - indeed, perhaps cannot be stemmed at all. For the first time in centuries, there are a significant number of Unioners who are truly willing to put aside tribal distinctions for the benefit of a wider whole - a sense of macro-destiny that you yourself entertain.

I would advise you go slowly - Unioners on Pacifica are surprisingly receptive to Libertonians, if only due to our trade relations with Liberty’s underworld. There are even the rare Libertonian amongst the Union’s ranks - not every member of Texas’s dispossessed ends up in the clutches of the Xenos or the Rogues. In addition, Pacifica itself features wet-dock facilities more than sufficient to keep your battlegroup running indefinitely, should it be required to do so.

My advice to you - go slow. Take your larger assets to Pacifica a ship, a crew, at a time. Give our men and yours time to adjust to each other’s existence. Encourage your crews to mingle with the local populace, yes, but cautiously. Analyse by psyche profile before subjecting them to the bustle of the underworld. Conflict avoidance is not the only matter at stake here - it is a matter of spirit. We do not wish to de-legitimise each other.

We collaborate because it is strategically valuable. The average Unioner is pragmatic before they are intolerant - it is how we have toed the line between the Maltese and the Corsairs for centuries whilst many others fall to one influence or the other. Prove that you are useful to the rank and file, and they will respond to you in kind.

Ostensibly, we are engineers, and you are soldiers. A soldier will respond well to a comrade in arms, and an engineer will respond well to an equally analytical mind. Let us be the versions of ourselves that we wish to see in each other.

The alternative is our naked treaty will fall apart at the seams and I will have no power to prevent it from doing so.

As for our motivations regarding the GMG - they are multiple. Practically, they impede our trade relations and consider us to be terrorists - which is a status we have entirely earned. Historically, they are the cause of the fall of the Rheinland of old and thus the entire reason our organisation exists in its present form, rather than a lawful conglomeration. They are our ultimate antithesis. Whilst we regard Republican as a symptom, the GMG is the virus. It is against our system of belief that the resources of a house, and thus, the entire house itself, should be beholden to an entity that does not vote, that does not pay tax, and thus has no motivation to support the wellbeing of the peoples it exports to. The GMG milks the treasury of others, grows rich beyond the imaginings of anybody but the upper echelons of Interspace Commerce and Synth Industries, whilst thousands starve in the streets because various governments of Sirius are locked in a state of fuel starvation by the GMG monopoly. The GMG saw fit to topple a legitimate government, loved by the populace, for the sake of banal credits. We regard the GMG as not merely a crime against Rheinland, but against the entirety of humanity.

However, I concur that the GMG is not a common target - let us handle the GMG, as we have for centuries. I merely ask if you choose to become a beneficiary of the H-fuel we rob from them.

Are you willing to sacrifice smaller principles for the greater good, Admiral?

You’re not thinking like a Unioner here, Admiral.

We are masters of acquisition and demand - we built a near millennium of continuous sustenance upon that predicate, both above and below the law. Our “reward” is your survival.

It is customary for us to act through intermediary agents to attain objectives that we ourselves would not otherwise be able to achieve. Despite what the more zealous of our pilots would have you believe, we are not opposed to the state of Liberty, nor any nation of man. We are opposed to systems of exploitation, of scarcity, of forcing one man to be the dependent of a stranger. Liberty has systematically rendered the government of the Rhein into indentured servitude over the centuries through economic and socio-political strangulation - but Liberty itself is not to blame; rather, the tawdry legislature implemented by members within Liberty’s government.

We cannot combat the system, Harmony - we have no intention to become a component of a war that extends beyond our insight, nor do we have the moral capacity - let alone physical. We can combat the cancer from the receiving end - yet would it be just for a patient to conduct his own surgery? Of course not.

The Nomad infection is a wider symptom of destruction. We, ourselves, have Rheinland’s interests at heart, even if our government does not. Obviously, the most culturally, geopolitically and economically influential house in Sirius becoming a marionette string in the K’hara’s galactic reproduction of Kasperle and Grete. Rheinland itself has already suffered immensely at the whims of the incubi. It is an existential challenge of immeasurable scope - a feud compatible with our own objectives to free Rheinland from anarchic influences. Self-evidently, the Nomads are the ultimate opponent of that which we crave, yet seem antithetical to; peace.

Besides, there are pragmatic interests. If your vessels are able to hold the line within Bering, we can pull more of the Unioner home defence forces down to the Koeln and Frankfurt systems to confront our own flashpoint against the Hesse and SCRA. Any aid we provide you forms a feedback loop, Admiral. We are the beneficiaries of your survival.

A structural assessment of the Baltimore should not take long, however, if its injury is as extensive as you claim, then we will prioritise our efforts on the Chicago first, for the sake of having the most guns in action simultaneously. The Union remains fascinated by the technical schematics of the Archer coaxial cannon would request access to the vessel’s internals to investigate the design - our own gunboats are due for a technical refresh concerning their own forward ordinance, and comparative exercise would be assistive in ascertaining points of technical commonality.


We still recall the loss of the Discovery, Admiral Knight, and how tenaciously close the dreadnaught was to survival, despite her battle damage. We could not condone Harmony the loss of any more assets of tactical significance.

Once the Cruisers have arrived, I will appoint Operative Zelinksy to provide adequate assessment. She is unusually technically proficient, even amongst Unioners, and should prove to be the most adequate appointee to run the repair team.


Flight reports show that joint operations between the Unioners and Harmony have proceeded comparatively well - indeed, better than projections would imply. You do yourselves credit.


Perhaps the experiment may bloom fruit.

I do not doubt your professionalism or your knowledge of your own hardware, Admiral Knight - however, we will be the judges as to the New Jersey’s restorability. We have spent centuries restoring seemingly irredeemable hulks to function - we will spend centuries more achieving much the same. As a naval officer, accustomed to the logistical chain of entire industries maintaining your cannons, this form of make-and-mend would be culturally uncustomary to you; we would have you learn on your feet.


However, if the New Jersey does indeed turn out to be crippled beyond repair, we request that, once the ship has been stripped back to her structural members, we are given leave to use the vessel’s external frame for our own purposes. As elements of the Kaiserflotte are steadily repressurised, we are in sore need of gunnery targets to test the viability of their weapons systems - some have not been fired for decades and they have hardly been preserved in the most ideal conditions. We have our own maintenance to carry out - the faster we can bring our artillery back to service, the more pressure we can lay against the Texan border. It’s a simple calculus. Similar crises make for similar solutions, Admiral Knight.


The preservation of the Harmony is an entirely separate matter. Whilst we can continue to superficially repair the vessel - as a ship of war, she will inevitably sustain shock penetration damage to her vitals - scars that we can only remedy partially without Libertonian blueprints and manufacturing. Over time, the Harmony will start to suffer from chain system failures and her tactical viability will proportionally plummet. Obviously, the battleship is critical to your survival, so short of abandoning the cause completely, your opinions are few. I am not personally equipped to brief you further, but the Union’s consensus concurs with you - we must re-engineer the Harmony to be better compatible to the necessary retrofits she will necessary endure over the coming months, or we must abandon Liberty to the infected. Whatever the crises, however great the cost.

The choice is obvious, of course. Our design studios are at your disposal, Harmony, as are our docklands.

Of course. To begin engineering, we will need a design. Simply improvising as we proceed will imperil the end effectiveness of the design.

Whilst we can perform the physical construction and resolve many of the technical and structural challenges, the timescale involved gives us little time to adjust to Libertonian engineering convention. We therefore suggest that external organisations are given design input, if minimal and isolated in role. The Harmony’s survival, due to the the necessity of its speed, will be less dependent on the vessel’s artillery than its sensor grid. This is a department wherein the input of the Hackers will be objectively superior to our own, and we advise that you attempt to secure a fourth generation spyglass suite from them.

Equally, we have working ties with the Order - to obvious common goals. We view communication between yourself and the Order to be considerably delayed. They have the technical blueprints for all manner of Libertonian large assets - technical diagrams that would assist us in increasing the efficacy of our retrofit. The more proprietary information we possess, the faster we can work, the more effective the Harmony will be post redesign.

Obviously, we have no intentions to share any technical or strategic data on either the vessel or the battlegroup with anyone untoward. If measures of this kind are to be taken, they will occur only according to your edict.